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xyzzysqrlWell, we're back and we're gonna keep this thing going. Did you miss me? I missed me, I might be the only one.
Someday I'm going to have to write a thing about why I still like Everquest 2. Legends of Norrath is gonna take up some of that explanation. You know how to prove your game is from the mid-2000s? Put a collectable card game in your MMO. I love that thing. I wish I were better at deckbuilding. Oh well.
Anyway, last time I recapped the plot. Now I am recapping recapping the plot, and now I am stopping before this goes any deeper. I don't think I'm quite up to doing a rack of sidequests right now, so we're heading down the road to Mt. Bur-Omisace. This road, as it happens, leads us through the Golmore Jungle. Let's catch up with the group there.
The Golmore Jungle is a huge hive of life, as one expects from... y'know, a jungle. Because we're playing an RPG party we promptly set about depopulating it just as hard as we can, because that is what heroes do. Huge panthers with tentacles and octopus heads roam the trees, and they drop things like "coeurl pelts". (Hey, Final Fantasy Tactics-literate people in the audience, wasn't that a thing? "Coeurl" being used wrong in one of the games? I dimly remember so, but I cannot recall.) Also wandering the forest are Malboros. We mentioned these before down in the sewers, but yes, they're a cigarette pun. Their iconic attack is "bad breath", which puts the target under the effect of as many negative status effects as the game you're playing will allow. It's not uncommon to lose a whole party to these if they show up and you're unprepared.
I also get a Rare Game spawn in here, the "Midgardsormr". ... You know, there was that Nidhogg earlier, and now this... Uh, is there something WRONG with the FF12 world? Is it ENDING soon? Should I be FRIGHTENED by this and ... I dunno, lay down and put a paper bag over my head? Anyway, it is not particularly threatening, thank goodness.
...You know, I bet nobody's gonna believe me on the "panthers with octopus heads" thing. Check these things out. They're like Cthulhu had sex with a cactus and a cat at the SAME TIME. Or maybe they're MINDFLAYER CATS. Wouldn't that be GREAT?
Horrible. I mean horrible. ... Carrying on.
There are also Gargoyles and Hellhounds. Because why shouldn't there be, I guess.
While exploring the party bumps into a giant magical force field, stretching across the path. "The jungle denies us passage." Fran notes. No kidding, Fran. "Not us. I." she follows up, and stalks away. Vaan calls after her, trying to get her to explain, but she's lost in a walk-and-talk with Balthier. She can tell that Balthier's worried about the nethicite, and she wants to get things finished with. So she draws some sigils in the air and dispells an illusion, revealing a new path deeper into the wood.
"We go to see the viera in this forest." Fran says, gesturing towards the road like a bunny-eared Vanna White.
"I bet they'll be glad to see you after so long!" Penelo chips in.
"I am an unwelcome guest in their forest." Fran explains. So... not so much with the happy, then. Indeed, Fran elects to sit and wait outside the village while Vaan goes in alone to find "Mjrn". So far, what I'm getting of Viera Culture is that their names look like four-letter randomly-generated Captcha codes. Possibly Fran left because she discovered the dreaded forbidden "vowel".
Incidentally, there's a Moogle shopkeeper just outside the village. I mention this because I want to mark that HERE is where that "Mage's Habit" that dropped for Balthier back when we first got him is actually sold in stores. In other words, DAMN that was an AWESOME armor drop!
The moment Vaan steps into Eruyt village proper, every Viera in the place turns to glare in his direction. Also, bows are drawn. They seem friendly. Driving the point home is conversation with the random townspeople, who say things like "Leave. Now.", "I have no words for humes." and "You are not welcome to walk in this Wood." I also learn that the Elder here is named "Jote", so I guess some lucky Viera are allowed to have vowels after all. Two, even! I wonder if any are named things like "Ouao" or "Eiii".
I'M MAKING FUN OF YOUR NAMES BECAUSE YOU'RE AN EXCLUDING MONOCULTURE. I SAID IT. THAT'S RIGHT. I didn't mock the GARIF, now did I? Okay, I did. A little.
I'm a terrible person, you guys.
"We're looking for Mjrn." Vaan explains, to anybody who'll stop and listen.
"Mjrn. She LIVES here, doesn't she?" he continues.
"We're NOT LEAVING until you let us see her." he pushes on. At this point everyone is looking pretty irritated. Then Fran walks in and the irritation comes to a point.
Fran reveals that the Wood just told her Mjrn isn't IN the village. (Thanks, Fran. This wasn't awkward or anything.) She pumps the elder for info. Where did she go? Why did she leave? The elder shoots back with "The Wood tells us where she is. Can't you hear it? Oh, you cannot." Viera who have left the wood are no Viera at all, and their ears get dulled by listening to HUMAN words. Viera must live in the WOOD, because that is the LAW.
"You worry about your laws then, and stay out of our way. We'll find her ourselves." Vaan finally snarks back. This gives the elder a slightly unnerved look, as if she's finally realized he's genuinely serious and will not go away until he gets what he wants. She summons up the voice of the Wood and listens briefly. Mjrn went west. She's among "those with clothes of cold iron". NOW will Vaan go away?
Vaan will go away now. But Fran interrupts: "The Viera come from the wood, but it is not the only end we may choose." The Elder sighs that she heard that 50 years ago, and storms off.
I wonder what happened to the Viera between now and the Tactics Advance games. They're perfectly happy to leave the woods THEN. What changed? Did Fran make a statement, proving to them that it's all right? ... Of course, I seem to recall that much further down the timeline you just don't -see- Viera anymore...
Let's... not dwell on that thought.
On the way out, Balthier drops Vaan a "way to go". He didn't think they'd get any information at ALL out of the Viera. Now, -where- in the "west" is Mjrn? The "West" is a big place. Larsa opts that maybe they meant the nearby Henne Magicite Mines. ... Does anyone remember the MOUNTAIN? We were going to the mountain. But no, apparently Mjrn has a key to the force-fields that block the forest, and Fran has reason to believe she will help her. Let's roll out.
But not before this happens.
Oh Vaan. You were doing SO WELL, Vaan. Way to kick yourself in the face shoving your boot down your throat.
From an analytical standpoint, I'm really finding Vaan fascinating. For every moment of build-up he gets, there's a scene of equal and opposite tear-down. Yet Vaan is the viewpoint character, and also the character you control in cities and towns. Now, I think the reason for this is that Vaan is the character with the highest Streetwise skill, in tabletop RPG terms. He knows his way around a city, he knows who to talk to to get information the party will need, he can find people and get them to open up to his POV. I assume the rest of the party holes up in a inn somewhere and plots while Vaan works the streets getting monster contracts, shopping and haggling with merchants, running down leads, and all that other stuff.
Not that any of that stuff is mentioned in game. It's just fanon from me. But it would give Vaan a use besides flip-flopping between "butt of joke" and "eyedropper of characterization". Maybe he'll ... ah, I can't even hope he'll get better. Anyway, back to Ozmose Plains, then South to the mines.
On the way out to Ozmose Plains, I find a pair of Imperial soldiers. One desperately needs a potion or he'll die! Naturally we stab them both, screaming SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS -- Wait, no. I give them the potion and they let me ride their chocobo. "You can't access some paths around here without a chocobo!" one clumsily exposits. "Like the path to the Henne Mines! But you should stay away from there!"
Has this ever worked on any RPG player above the age of ten? I say that because when I was younger than ten it did work on me. I would go "Oh people say not to go there." and I didn't. I was a dim kid.
We ride the chocobo through some hidden passages I would REALLY have liked to have known about sooner and find the mine, with dead Imperials strewn all around it. "Draklor Labs researchers. What were THEY doing here?" Larsa wonders. Balthier is confident in his reply of "Research."
I'd like to know the story THERE too, come to think of it!
The mines of course are completely choked with bats and such. It's also choked with a puzzle where some doors are red, and some are blue, and you can't have both open at once, and bluh bluh PUZZLE TIME. I have absolutely no idea where I'm going or what I'm doing. I -am- jumped by a number of "Jellies" that spew "Yellow Liquid" when defeated, but I don't want to think about that! So I wander around aimlessly opening and closing doors and stabbing bats. Then it turns out that it's not REALLY a maze, there's one obvious "right" path and a bunch of closed loops, so I'm okay with this. Deeper and deeper into the mine I work, tinkering with the doors, exploring further and di--
... and discovering the rare MINE-DWELLING BAT-EATING T-REX what the HELL kind of ecosystem is THIS?
There are tyrannosaurs in the mines. Well. Okay.
Naturally we stab them, screaming SIC SEMPER TYRANNOSAUR! We fall on them swords-flailing and hey, these things aren't so tough.
You know what is tough, though? JELLIES. Okay, not really, but. There's a very small room with a switch deep in the mine, and when you flip the switch (as you must, to open the doors), piles of them rain down from the ceiling. At least 20+ of them, which is okay. I lost count because Fran was busy setting them all on FIRE. *twitch twitch* don't ask me about jellie.
Deeper and deeper we go, until Fran calls a stop. That smell of Mist. Is it her? Larsa checks out the local ore, comparing it to the stuff back in Bhujerba. Then Mjrn stumbles into view. Her eyes are wide and her gait is decidedly zombielike. She's mumbling about the "reek" of power.
"Is it her?" Ashe asks, very quietly. From across the very large mine cavern Mjrn WHIPS around and THRUSTS a finger at Ashe.
"STAAAAAY AWAY, POWER-NEEDY HUME!" she snarls in a distinctly not-healthy echoy reverb, then leaps off-screen and runs away on all fours.
M'gonna go out on a limb and say that is perhaps... not entirely natural.
NEXT TIME: We follow the crazy shrieking possessed lady. I have no reason to believe this will end badly.
Someday I'm going to have to write a thing about why I still like Everquest 2. Legends of Norrath is gonna take up some of that explanation. You know how to prove your game is from the mid-2000s? Put a collectable card game in your MMO. I love that thing. I wish I were better at deckbuilding. Oh well.
Anyway, last time I recapped the plot. Now I am recapping recapping the plot, and now I am stopping before this goes any deeper. I don't think I'm quite up to doing a rack of sidequests right now, so we're heading down the road to Mt. Bur-Omisace. This road, as it happens, leads us through the Golmore Jungle. Let's catch up with the group there.
The Golmore Jungle is a huge hive of life, as one expects from... y'know, a jungle. Because we're playing an RPG party we promptly set about depopulating it just as hard as we can, because that is what heroes do. Huge panthers with tentacles and octopus heads roam the trees, and they drop things like "coeurl pelts". (Hey, Final Fantasy Tactics-literate people in the audience, wasn't that a thing? "Coeurl" being used wrong in one of the games? I dimly remember so, but I cannot recall.) Also wandering the forest are Malboros. We mentioned these before down in the sewers, but yes, they're a cigarette pun. Their iconic attack is "bad breath", which puts the target under the effect of as many negative status effects as the game you're playing will allow. It's not uncommon to lose a whole party to these if they show up and you're unprepared.
I also get a Rare Game spawn in here, the "Midgardsormr". ... You know, there was that Nidhogg earlier, and now this... Uh, is there something WRONG with the FF12 world? Is it ENDING soon? Should I be FRIGHTENED by this and ... I dunno, lay down and put a paper bag over my head? Anyway, it is not particularly threatening, thank goodness.
...You know, I bet nobody's gonna believe me on the "panthers with octopus heads" thing. Check these things out. They're like Cthulhu had sex with a cactus and a cat at the SAME TIME. Or maybe they're MINDFLAYER CATS. Wouldn't that be GREAT?
Horrible. I mean horrible. ... Carrying on.
There are also Gargoyles and Hellhounds. Because why shouldn't there be, I guess.
While exploring the party bumps into a giant magical force field, stretching across the path. "The jungle denies us passage." Fran notes. No kidding, Fran. "Not us. I." she follows up, and stalks away. Vaan calls after her, trying to get her to explain, but she's lost in a walk-and-talk with Balthier. She can tell that Balthier's worried about the nethicite, and she wants to get things finished with. So she draws some sigils in the air and dispells an illusion, revealing a new path deeper into the wood.
"We go to see the viera in this forest." Fran says, gesturing towards the road like a bunny-eared Vanna White.
"I bet they'll be glad to see you after so long!" Penelo chips in.
"I am an unwelcome guest in their forest." Fran explains. So... not so much with the happy, then. Indeed, Fran elects to sit and wait outside the village while Vaan goes in alone to find "Mjrn". So far, what I'm getting of Viera Culture is that their names look like four-letter randomly-generated Captcha codes. Possibly Fran left because she discovered the dreaded forbidden "vowel".
Incidentally, there's a Moogle shopkeeper just outside the village. I mention this because I want to mark that HERE is where that "Mage's Habit" that dropped for Balthier back when we first got him is actually sold in stores. In other words, DAMN that was an AWESOME armor drop!
The moment Vaan steps into Eruyt village proper, every Viera in the place turns to glare in his direction. Also, bows are drawn. They seem friendly. Driving the point home is conversation with the random townspeople, who say things like "Leave. Now.", "I have no words for humes." and "You are not welcome to walk in this Wood." I also learn that the Elder here is named "Jote", so I guess some lucky Viera are allowed to have vowels after all. Two, even! I wonder if any are named things like "Ouao" or "Eiii".
I'M MAKING FUN OF YOUR NAMES BECAUSE YOU'RE AN EXCLUDING MONOCULTURE. I SAID IT. THAT'S RIGHT. I didn't mock the GARIF, now did I? Okay, I did. A little.
I'm a terrible person, you guys.
"We're looking for Mjrn." Vaan explains, to anybody who'll stop and listen.
"Mjrn. She LIVES here, doesn't she?" he continues.
"We're NOT LEAVING until you let us see her." he pushes on. At this point everyone is looking pretty irritated. Then Fran walks in and the irritation comes to a point.
Fran reveals that the Wood just told her Mjrn isn't IN the village. (Thanks, Fran. This wasn't awkward or anything.) She pumps the elder for info. Where did she go? Why did she leave? The elder shoots back with "The Wood tells us where she is. Can't you hear it? Oh, you cannot." Viera who have left the wood are no Viera at all, and their ears get dulled by listening to HUMAN words. Viera must live in the WOOD, because that is the LAW.
"You worry about your laws then, and stay out of our way. We'll find her ourselves." Vaan finally snarks back. This gives the elder a slightly unnerved look, as if she's finally realized he's genuinely serious and will not go away until he gets what he wants. She summons up the voice of the Wood and listens briefly. Mjrn went west. She's among "those with clothes of cold iron". NOW will Vaan go away?
Vaan will go away now. But Fran interrupts: "The Viera come from the wood, but it is not the only end we may choose." The Elder sighs that she heard that 50 years ago, and storms off.
I wonder what happened to the Viera between now and the Tactics Advance games. They're perfectly happy to leave the woods THEN. What changed? Did Fran make a statement, proving to them that it's all right? ... Of course, I seem to recall that much further down the timeline you just don't -see- Viera anymore...
Let's... not dwell on that thought.
On the way out, Balthier drops Vaan a "way to go". He didn't think they'd get any information at ALL out of the Viera. Now, -where- in the "west" is Mjrn? The "West" is a big place. Larsa opts that maybe they meant the nearby Henne Magicite Mines. ... Does anyone remember the MOUNTAIN? We were going to the mountain. But no, apparently Mjrn has a key to the force-fields that block the forest, and Fran has reason to believe she will help her. Let's roll out.
But not before this happens.
Oh Vaan. You were doing SO WELL, Vaan. Way to kick yourself in the face shoving your boot down your throat.
From an analytical standpoint, I'm really finding Vaan fascinating. For every moment of build-up he gets, there's a scene of equal and opposite tear-down. Yet Vaan is the viewpoint character, and also the character you control in cities and towns. Now, I think the reason for this is that Vaan is the character with the highest Streetwise skill, in tabletop RPG terms. He knows his way around a city, he knows who to talk to to get information the party will need, he can find people and get them to open up to his POV. I assume the rest of the party holes up in a inn somewhere and plots while Vaan works the streets getting monster contracts, shopping and haggling with merchants, running down leads, and all that other stuff.
Not that any of that stuff is mentioned in game. It's just fanon from me. But it would give Vaan a use besides flip-flopping between "butt of joke" and "eyedropper of characterization". Maybe he'll ... ah, I can't even hope he'll get better. Anyway, back to Ozmose Plains, then South to the mines.
On the way out to Ozmose Plains, I find a pair of Imperial soldiers. One desperately needs a potion or he'll die! Naturally we stab them both, screaming SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS -- Wait, no. I give them the potion and they let me ride their chocobo. "You can't access some paths around here without a chocobo!" one clumsily exposits. "Like the path to the Henne Mines! But you should stay away from there!"
Has this ever worked on any RPG player above the age of ten? I say that because when I was younger than ten it did work on me. I would go "Oh people say not to go there." and I didn't. I was a dim kid.
We ride the chocobo through some hidden passages I would REALLY have liked to have known about sooner and find the mine, with dead Imperials strewn all around it. "Draklor Labs researchers. What were THEY doing here?" Larsa wonders. Balthier is confident in his reply of "Research."
I'd like to know the story THERE too, come to think of it!
The mines of course are completely choked with bats and such. It's also choked with a puzzle where some doors are red, and some are blue, and you can't have both open at once, and bluh bluh PUZZLE TIME. I have absolutely no idea where I'm going or what I'm doing. I -am- jumped by a number of "Jellies" that spew "Yellow Liquid" when defeated, but I don't want to think about that! So I wander around aimlessly opening and closing doors and stabbing bats. Then it turns out that it's not REALLY a maze, there's one obvious "right" path and a bunch of closed loops, so I'm okay with this. Deeper and deeper into the mine I work, tinkering with the doors, exploring further and di--
... and discovering the rare MINE-DWELLING BAT-EATING T-REX what the HELL kind of ecosystem is THIS?
There are tyrannosaurs in the mines. Well. Okay.
Naturally we stab them, screaming SIC SEMPER TYRANNOSAUR! We fall on them swords-flailing and hey, these things aren't so tough.
You know what is tough, though? JELLIES. Okay, not really, but. There's a very small room with a switch deep in the mine, and when you flip the switch (as you must, to open the doors), piles of them rain down from the ceiling. At least 20+ of them, which is okay. I lost count because Fran was busy setting them all on FIRE. *twitch twitch* don't ask me about jellie.
Deeper and deeper we go, until Fran calls a stop. That smell of Mist. Is it her? Larsa checks out the local ore, comparing it to the stuff back in Bhujerba. Then Mjrn stumbles into view. Her eyes are wide and her gait is decidedly zombielike. She's mumbling about the "reek" of power.
"Is it her?" Ashe asks, very quietly. From across the very large mine cavern Mjrn WHIPS around and THRUSTS a finger at Ashe.
"STAAAAAY AWAY, POWER-NEEDY HUME!" she snarls in a distinctly not-healthy echoy reverb, then leaps off-screen and runs away on all fours.
M'gonna go out on a limb and say that is perhaps... not entirely natural.
NEXT TIME: We follow the crazy shrieking possessed lady. I have no reason to believe this will end badly.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 09:25 pm (UTC)There needs to be a game where the "they say not to go there" always means that you actually should not go there and that nothing good happens from exploring it. n_n